Indiana Digitized Newspapers

Indiana has a wonderful collection of digitized newspapers available and there is a lot available for free. In fact, if you are an Indiana resident, you can get access to select newspapers on newspapers.com through INSPIRE, provided through the Indiana State Library!

The Hoosier State Chronicles is the name for Indiana’s Digital Historic Newspaper Program and on their website they mention many places to go to find digitized Indiana newspapers. Here is a rundown of what’s available on the websites mentioned.

Chronicling America

• 38 newspapers available
• Word searchable (reads with Optical Character Recognition)
• Brookville:
  • Brookville American (1858-1861)
  • Indiana American (1833-1861 and 1865-1872)
• Indianapolis:
  • Daily State Sentinel 1841-1853
  • Indiana State Sentinel 1841-1853; 1845-1851; 1861-1865
  • The Indiana State Sentinel 1868-1895
  • Indiana Tribune 1878-1907
  • The Indianapolis Daily Herald 1867-1904
  • The Indianapolis Journal 1867-1904
  • The Indianapolis Leader 1879-1890
  • The Indianapolis Sentinel 1880-1904
  • Weekly Indiana State Sentinel 1851-1861
• Jasper:
  • The Jasper Weekly Courier 1858-1922
• Plymouth:
  • Marshall County Democrat 1855-1859
  • Marshall County Republican 1856-1878
  • Marshall County Independent 1894-1895; 1897-1902
  • The Plymouth Democrat 1869-1941
  • The Plymouth Republican 1878-1901
  • Plymouth Banner 1852-1855
  • The Plymouth Pilot 1851-1852
  • The Plymouth Tribune 1901-1911
  • Plymouth Weekly Banner 1855-1856
  • Semi-Weekly Independent 1895-1897
  • The Weekly Republican 1911-1922
• Louisville, KY:
  • Ohio Valley Worker: Official Paper of the Federated trades Council of Louisville, Trades and Labor Council of New Albany, Central Labor Union of Jefferson 1904-1904 (only one issue)
• Winchester
  • Randolph County Journal 1855-1862; 1864-1865
  • Randolph Journal 1862-1862; 1865-67
  • Winchester Journal 1862-1863; 1870-1920
• South Bend
  • South Bend News-Times 1913-1938
• Terra-Haute
  • Wabash Express 1841-1861
  • The Daily Wabash Express 1861-1920

Indiana Memory

• Clicking on the Indiana Newspapers button takes you to the Hoosier State Chronicles website so you need to click on collection list and then rearrange this list to collections by type to find newspapers.
• It is word searchable or at least it has a search button. However, I had searched words that were in the title or newspaper article and it would tell me nothing was found.
• Newspapers available:
  • Anderson: Gospel Trumpet-Publications of the Church of God 1881-1922
  • Howard County Newspapers
  • Greentown Gem 1898-1935
  • Greentown Grapevine 1995-2007
  • Muncie Post-Democrat Newspaper –1920’s through the 1930’s
  • Muncie, Richmond, Marion, New Castle, and Anderson: Muncie Times 1991-20?? – served the African American communities of the area
  • Smithville News turn of the 20^th century
  • The Dale News 1938–1943
  • The Free Soil Banner 1848-1854 – used by the Free Soil Party in Indiana

 Hoosier State Chronicles Blog and Website

• Blog
  • The State Chronicles blog has a list of the newspapers you can access freely and tells you were to find them – some in Google, some in the Indiana Memory, some in the Hoosier state Chronicles website and more! Wonderful resource to look through. A lot of the list are repeats of what I have here so I won’t recreate the list.
  • I do highly recommend subscribing to the blog to keep updated on new newspapers that have been added.
• Website
• The website itself has MANY titles and these ARE word searchable!
  • Brookville American –  19 February 1858 – 21 December 1860
  • Daily State sentinel –  1 January 1862 – 31 October 1865
  • Indiana American – 7 October 1853 – 25 December 1857
  • Indiana American – 29 September 1865 – 18 December 1868
  • Indiana State sentinel – 4 June 1845 – 29 December 1849
  • Indiana State sentinel – 9 January 1861 – 30 May 1864
  • Indiana State sentinel – 21 July 1841 – 30 December 1852
  • Indiana State sentinel – 6 January 1874 – 26 December 1894
  • Indiana Tribune  – 17 August 1900 – 2 March 1907
  • Marshall County Democrat  –5 November 1855 – 1 December 1859
  • Marshall County Republican – 9 October 1856 – 12 December 1878
  • Marshall County independent – 26 October 1894 – 29 November 1895
  • Marshall County independent – 17 December 1897 – 27 December 1901
  • Plymouth Journal
  • Plymouth banner – 3 March 1853 – 24 May 1855
  • Plymouth weekly banner – 31 May 1855 – 4 September 1856
  • Randolph County journal – 31 December 1857 – 19 December 1861
  • Randolph County journal – 1 January 1864 – 17 August 1865
  • Randolph journal – 11 July 1862 – 26 September 1862
  • Randolph journal – 20 September 1866 – 27 June 1867
  • Semi-weekly independent – 4 December 1895 – 25 April 1896
  • South Bend news-times – 1 July 1913 – 31 May 1921
  • Terre Haute daily gazette – 1 June 1870 – 31 October 1872
  • Terre Haute daily union – 20 June 1857 – 11 January 1859
  • Terre Haute gazette – 1 November 1872 – 18 February 1873
  • Terre Haute weekly gazette – 9 October 1873 – 5 July 1877
  • Terre-Haute daily American – 5 May 1855 – 29 May 1855
  • The Indianapolis daily herald – 1 November 1865 – 30 December 1865
  • The Indianapolis journal – 1 May 1888 – 8 June 1904
  • The Indianapolis leader – 30 August 1879 – 24 June 1882
  • The Indianapolis sentinel – 1 January 1885 – 31 May 1885
  • The Jasper weekly courier – 19 March 1858 – 30 June 1922
  • The Liberty Express 3 March 1916 – 18 February 1921
  • The Liberty Herald
  • The Plymouth Democrat – 9 September 1869 – 29 December 1870
  • The Plymouth Pilot – 16 April 1851 – 7 January 1852
  • The Plymouth Republican – 19 December 1878 – 3 October 1901
  • The Plymouth tribune – 10 October 1901 – 5 January 1911
  • The Plymouth weekly Democrat – 26 January 1860 – 2 September 1869
  • The Terre Haute journal – 1 January 1876 – 7 January 1876
  • The Terre-Haute journal – 6 December 1850 – 22 September 1854
  • The Terre-Haute weekly express – 6 March 1867 – 14 August 1872
  • The Vevay Times and Switzerland County Democrat – 4 January 1840 – 3 December 1840
  • The Winchester journal – 9 June 1870 – 28 July 1870
  • The Winchester journal – 3 October 1862 – 20 November 1863
  • The daily American – 30 May 1855 – 13 September 1855
  • The daily Wabash express – 12 February 1861 – 27 January 1865
  • The weekly Republican – 12 January 1911 – 2 May 1912
  • The weekly reveille – 23 June 1853 – 27 June 1855
  • Wabash express – 23 July 1856 – 23 January 1861
  • Weekly Indiana State sentinel – 10 February 1855 – 2 January 1860
  • Weekly Wabash express – 28 January 1863 – 27 February 1867

 Newspaper.com through Inspire

• You must be an Indiana resident to use this
• If you are at a library you shouldn’t need to worry about creating a profile but for searching at home you will need to create one but it’s simple enough.
• Once you get your username and temporary password, log in and you’ll be at a search page.
  • CAUTION! If you go looking about elsewhere on the site, you have to re-log in to get back to the search page.At least, I did, because I could not find my way back to the search engine page after looking around the site.
  • The screen should look like this after you logged in (and clicked the “click here” button right after log in):
• 
• Click on newspapers from that list and you’ll go here:
• 
• Then click on Newspapers.com.
• This is word searchable.
  • There are 7 Fort Wayne newspapers:
    • Fort Wayne Weekly Gazette 1895-1903
    • Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel 1875-1917
    • Fort Wayne Weekly Journal 1890-1899
    • Fort Wayne Daily Gazette 1864-1899
    • The Fort Wayne Sentinel 1870-1923
    • The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 1873-1923
    • Fort Wayne Daily News 1874-1923
  • There are 2 Indianapolis newspapers:
    • The Franklin Evening Star 1912-1919
    • The Evening Star 1920-1946
  • There is one Logansport newspaper:
    • Logansport Pharos-Tribune 1890-2006

It is always exciting to find new resources, especially when the cost is minimal! I do wish more was available on my areas of interest on newspapers.com through INSPIRE, but just having such an agreement between the two is a wonderful edition to Indiana resources.

I plan on doing some research using these newspapers that are available and I’ll post a review on how things went afterwards.

Any Indiana residents want to chime in on other places they have found useful? Or about any of the websites I mentioned?